The board layout and assorted microchips which comprise electrical and electro-optical systems within boxes or chassis often include proprietary circuit designs, source code, or encryption codes which need to be protected from reverse engineering or tampering. In order to protect the proprietary circuits from tampering, the board and chip manufacturers use various technologies including sealing the chips in an opaque or tamper resistant material, installing proprietary encryption code, or adding limited chassis or cover protection which could include security seals, or mechanical cut-off switches. However, over the last decade, these technologies, and anti-tamper coatings are not effective against more intrusive technologies and advanced software tools used by reverse engineers to determine how a particular board or device works or hack into the software or software codes. For example, reverse engineers drill small holes in the chassis and insert endoscope probes to view the proprietary contents of the chassis. They can also shine X-rays on individual die to find which cells are “OFF” while others are “ON.” This provides a decoding mechanism for the reverse engineer.
If the information that a reverse engineer obtains by reverse engineering proprietary boards and/or chips is related to advanced military applications, the information leak may endanger national security. In particular if the military is not aware of the leak, confidential information could become available to the reverse engineer in the future, without the military knowing that their information is compromised. Additionally, the reverse engineer may be able invent ways to overcome the proprietary technology yielding the technology ineffective for its intended use.
If the information that a reverse engineer obtains by reverse engineering proprietary boards and/or chips is related to commercial applications, the information leak could be used to undermine the economic security of the commercial vendor. If a commercial vendor is unaware of the transgression on their proprietary information, they are unable to take steps to impose a penalty or to obtain financial restitution.
For the reasons stated above and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the specification, there is a need in the art for protecting proprietary boards and chips and for alerting a vendor or customer if the proprietary information is breached. In some cases in order to keep the proprietary information away from reverse engineers, it is desirable to destroy the proprietary boards and chips if a tampering event occurs.